Biometric Systems Could be the Future of Cybersecurity

Posted Date 11/06/17

With cyberthreats on a fast rising curve, cybersecurity experts are constantly looking for new, better ways, to deter attacks and biometric technology is beginning to feature more prominently in their efforts, writes Katie Dolamore for the Telegraph.

PINs and passwords are still all-present but biometric identification technology is beginning to encroach on their territory because of its better effectiveness, experts say. The great thing about biometric identification is, of course, that it works with unique features, such as fingerprints or irises. However, existing systems of this kind can sometimes be tricked by photos or by hacking the system.

So, researchers are developing biometric solutions that cannot be tricked. These include a complete 3D scan of a user’s face for authentication, instead of a single element, and a vein scan, among others. French startup OneVisage offers 3D face recognition through elaborate scanning, eliminating the danger of an attacker fooling the system with as 2D photo of a person. Hitachi’s vein-reading software offers an alternative to fingerprint scans that ca be spoofed.

In fact, vein authentication seems to be among the most promising biometric cybersecurity solutions for the future. The tech uses near infrared rays to scan the vein pattern beneath the skin of your fingers to authenticate you. This pattern does not change with age, which makes it applicable for a wide demographic, and, what’s more important, it is very hard to hack: the tech only works with the actual vein patterns of living people.

Naturally, there is an issue of personal information security and it is an important question that legislators are addressing. A lot of awareness-raising is needed so people understand what sort of personal information they are agreeing to disclose via biometric systems and how this information will be secured. For now, however, biometric systems are far from the perfect state of affairs where every user of an authentication system can choose whether they want to have their personal information captured and stored or not.

The future looks bright for biometric security solutions. It starts looking a bit creepy, though, when you learn that advancements in biometric are also moving in the direction of mind-reading. OneVisage’s CEO, Christophe Remillet, says, a biometric authentication system that can read your password directly from your brain would be completely unhackable. Yet, as some cybersecurity experts would say, everything that can be hacked, will be hacked.